It's feared there's a 'critical shortage' of 'high quality teachers' in South Yorkshire
We've been speaking to the General Secretary of the Association of School & College leaders about the ongoing recruitment crisis
Last updated 19th Apr 2024
It's feared there's a 'critical shortage' of 'high quality teachers' in South Yorkshire & North Derbyshire.
It's as a new report's found vacancy rates in the education sector have risen by 80% across Yorkshire & the Humber since 2010.
Pepe Di'Iasio - from Doncaster - is the General Secretary of the Association of School & College leaders.
He's taught in classrooms across South Yorkshire for the last 30 years:
"As graduates leave university, they'll be looking at a range of different opportunities that are available to them.
"They'll look at teaching, and see that on average, teachers work longer hours, for less money, than other graduate careers - and that's not going to help with the recruitment situation.
"Society cannot continue to function without high quality teachers, and all the support specialists that work around them.
"We need to act swiftly, to put the support in place in schools, so that headteachers have the teachers in the classrooms that can deliver fantastic lessons."
The analysis of official data by the Trades Union Congress shows that just 1 in 14 local authorities (7%) have seen an improvement in teacher vacancy rates.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
“We now have more teachers than ever before, with over 468,000 teachers in the workforce, a 27,000 increase on 2010.
“To ensure we continue to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, we have undertaken the biggest reform of training and development in a generation, and last autumn, teachers received the largest pay award in over thirty years and a starting salary of £30,000.
“We also offer bursaries and scholarships of up to £30,000 tax-free for chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics teachers to ensure that teachers are recruited in the subject areas they are needed most.”